I am using a free (Wordpress) platform. The reason for this is because while I love blogging, I don't have the time to learn the level of CSS and such I would need to make a self-hosted blog the way I want it (and once I have full control, I would force myself to learn and make it awesome, that's the way I roll).

While there are limitations on free blogs, in my opinion they do not come into play unless you want things that are more than the average. And so far I can live with the average.

My dream is being able to host Twisted Faith myself and make it look that much better, and learn how to use HTML and CSS for it, but at this time I sadly cannot afford it time-wise or money-wise.

I've been playing WoW since beta and reading WoW blogs for a long time now. For some reason this is my first trip to these forums.

Another thing I do is web development for small businesses in my area. And I do all of the hosting as well. I've been thinking about what I could do with the extreme amount of extra space I am not using on my servers. So I give you http://ghostwebsolutions.com. Ignore the simplistic website it is merely a placeholder while I finish up the new site design.

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* b2evolution * Nucleus * WordPress

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I created a coupon for all you WoW bloggers out there! Enter BLOGAZEROTH50 during your checkout for 50% off your hosting costs for the life of your account!! This "promotion" will only be valid for the first 100 new customers.

How much are you paying for your domain name per year?About $10 a year for the domain name and $20 a month for a Linux slice at Linode (excellent VPS host if anyone is looking for one).

Why aren't you using a free host, like wordpress or blogger hosted.Originally started out on Blogger and moved my way up from there as my needs increased. I've always enjoyed the flexibility of having my own hosting account with higher space/bandwidth limits and the ability to install, configure and test all sorts of odd things on it.

How much are you paying for your domain name per year? About £2.90, suppose thats about 5-6 dollars in US terms?

Why aren't you using a free host, like wordpress or blogger hosted. I've had a reseller account for a while, i put together websites as kind of a semi hobby / spare time job / little extra cash etc kind of thing. I'm into all things techy and like the control i get from using my own webserver and reseller account. I'm literally just using a service from hostingzoom though and not setup my own vps although i'm thinking about getting a server in my house and doing it myself.

I've got a fair bit of space and bandwidth unused so i tend to give that away to friends and family and use it for my clients, one of my mates who runs http://www.crusaderscoliseum.com is eating some bandwidth up atm so its good to see it not go to waste.

How many are using a free host, or self hosted blog.Self-hosted, here.

How much are you paying for your domain name per year?$8.88 per year for my domains @ NameCheap.com. There are cheaper, but I <3 Namecheap for many reasons.Why aren't you using a free host, like wordpress or blogger hosted.Like most people said, its much, much, much more customizable and easier to do whatever you want with.

I used to run a site that was growing to a point that free hosts were too small and too slow for it, denofshadows.net (unfortunately no longer active due to the 2 main games it covered being cancelled int he same week). Since then I have had some space on a shared host which seems fit to my purposes so far, and have bought domains for each of my projects as and when they get to a point where it's time to show them off. That being said I've got a bit of a legacy package and so pay about $7 for what now costs about $20-$30/mo. from the same company (since I took out the package my host has been taken over at least twice etc. heh)

At the end of the day, way back when I was on other people servers (the last host I had that wasn't paid for myself was over on the Stratics network) I didn't have the freedom that I do now, and I wouldn't wish to go back.

I use Dreamhost, which is amazingly cheap (I can probably give anyone interested a 'coupon code' that would get a signup discount). I hear some horror stories about them but if you don't consume massive amounts of resources it should be a non-issue. I pay less than 10 dollars a month and 10 dollars per domain. I have shell access, I can host pretty much anything so long as it's not illegal, they're huge on freedom of speech.

I have the ability to set up and run an assortment of blog software on my hosting (in fact, they have keen one-button installs) but then I'd have to worry about security issues, installing updates to the software, upgrading to whatever is the best spam fighting tool of the moment, having updates potentially eat any customizations I do (which is what I found happened with sites I've made using Joomla) and a sea of unnecessary frustration of having to redo all of my tweaks over and over again.

I'm using Blogger instead of hosting my own because this way I can let someone else keep the software and the captcha up to date and just worry about writing and socializing. I point a cname record at blogger and tell blogger what the new domain for the blog is at and it works, plus I can still use my own space for hosting other projects under the same domain.

I did actually try Dreamhost but didn't get on with them for the point you made about paying extra per-domain, at the time I was using about 6 domains and so that would have got expensive.

Regarding updating own software etc, I did used to rely on Wordpress but as you said it then potentially breaks any customisations every time you do an update. This is why I went down the road of just making my own platform this time. Of course that's not viable for all and so sites like Blogger provide a good alternative.

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